With the kickoff of the post Labor Day academic year, students have been flocking back to college campuses and readying themselves for classes and coursework. For those who are aspiring entrepreneurs or technology enthusiasts, anticipation grows for upcoming hackathons to be held in surrounding areas.
Two New Jersey hackathons kicking off the season are HackRU hosted on Oct 11th and 12th and HackNJIT on November 8th and 9th. HackRU is a 24-hour event at Rutgers University where students from all over the country will build and work with technologies and connect with industry mentors. The event is open to those 18 or over with appropriate ID. Participants vie for prizes. Event information may be viewed at: http://hackru.org
On November 8th and 9th, NJIT’s College of Computing Sciences Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) will host HackNJIT in the NJIT Campus Center. Prizes will also be awarded; First place will receive $1,500, second place will receive $1,000, and third place will receive $500. The registration limit is also 150 people; no sign-ups will be allowed at the door. Registration will close one week prior to the event date and is open to all college students that are 18 or over with a valid student ID.
For those unfamiliar with hackathons, the experience is one of idea sharing, skill development, and team building around technology. Participants typically arrive at a hackathon with the goal of joining a coding team. Members will work usually non-stop over a weekend on a mutually agreed upon project that is demoed at the hackathon’s end.
The hackathon experience provides exposure to tech startup formation, as well as an opportunity for students to gain experience that may be helpful to them in choosing a possible career path into technology. With conference rooms and gymnasiums filled with eager, tech-savvy student programmers, many companies attend hackathons to find future employees.
In addition to the college campus venues creating opportunities for resumes to be exchanged with potential employers, personal networks are also often formed. It is the range and variety of benefits presented at a hackathon in a fun atmosphere that attracts student participants in large numbers. Princeton University this past spring hosted a hackathon of almost 600 participants; half from the university and half bussed in from the Mid-Atlantic region.
Attending a hackathon provides a fairly unique experience for college students that they may look back upon with great satisfaction and appreciation at some later point in their career.
